Department of Education Awards CNA $2 Million to Help States Improve Ability to Meet Educators Top Needs

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — CNA (CNA), a non-profit, public interest research and analysis institution, has received a $2 million award from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to collaborate with leaders in the education community throughout the country to define technical assistance needs of state and local education agencies.

"CNA has a long tradition of providing technical assistance in the education arena and in other fields," said Lee Gunn, President of CNA's Institute for Public Research. "We are excited to be working in partnership with ED and education leaders to serve educators nationwide."

The CNA project is designed to define the technical assistance needs of educators – from curriculum development to resource management – with a focus on helping implement the No Child Left Behind Act. Congress has directed ED to create ten Regional Advisory Committees composed of state and local education leaders, practitioners, parents, business representatives and researchers to ensure that a diversity of views is considered in articulating regional needs. The Committees' will prepare reports that will be used in defining the scope and mission of 20 new education technical assistance centers to be created across the country.

Interestingly, much of the Committees' business will be conducted through a variety of digital communications technologies. CNA is creating a process to allow the public to participate in Committee meetings in their region. Project partners include the Institute for Educational Leadership, the McKenzie Group, InterCall, IceWEB, and Nortel Network Kidz Online. The project will launch with a meeting of the Regional Advisory Committees in Washington in early November.

"This project recognizes that technical assistance needs can vary by region and by state," said Dr. Donald Cymrot, Director of CNA's Education Center. "We will be working collaboratively with the Regional Advisory Committees to develop a process for identifying both general and specific regional technical assistance needs posed by the challenges of No Child Left Behind."

CNA will undertake the following activities:

1. Conduct research in the ten ED regions to create regional profiles that provide a picture of what each region looks like in terms of demographics and educational resources, educational attainment and other defining features of education.
2. Coordinate and facilitate the Committees' activities, develop and implement a process to collect data and other information and deliberate to identify the technical assistance needs of its region in a report to ED.
3. Synthesize the committees' reports into a single report that will serve as the basis to develop the vision, mission goals and objectives for the 20 technical assistance centers.